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Deficits, Spending, and Taxes

The nation’s fiscal outlook is even bleaker than the government forecast earlier this year because the recession turned out to be deeper than widely expected, the budget offices of the White House and Congress agreed in separate updates on Tuesday.

The Obama administration’s Office of Management and Budget raised its 10-year tally of deficits expected through 2019 to $9.05 trillion, nearly $2 trillion more than it projected in February. That would represent 5.1 percent of the economy’s estimated gross domestic product for the decade, a higher level than is generally considered healthy.

What is the right response to these deficits?

One view holds that most current expenditure is desirable — indeed, that expenditure should ideally be much higher — so the United States should raise taxes to balance the budget. Taxes are a drag on economic growth, however, and unpopular with many voters, so this view presents politicians with an unhappy tradeoff.

The alternative view holds that a substantial fraction of current expenditure is undesirable and should be eliminated, even if the revenue to pay for it could be manufactured out of thin air. To be concrete:

Medicare and Medicaid encourage excessive spending on health care.

The invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan encourage hostility to the U.S. and thereby increase the risk of terrorism.

Drug prohibition generates crime and corruption.

Agricultural subsidies distort decisions about which crops to grow, and where.

And much, much more.

So, under this view, the United States can have its cake and eat it too: improve the economy and reduce the deficit without the need to raise taxes.

This approach is not, of course, politically trivial, since existing expenditure programs have constituencies that will fight their elimination.

But thinking about these two views of the deficits is nevertheless useful: it shows that discussion should really be about which aspects of government are truly beneficial, not just about the deficits per se.